S. D. writes: I’m not sure that Socialism would benefit them to the same degree that it has benefited Norway or Sweden.
It requires each citizen to assume a fairly high degree of personal responsibility to see the entire society as a family.
And truthfully this is difficult outside of a super-homogeneous country.
Right-wing countries lead to more racial animosity because they are more of a meritocracy that do less for the poor worker, I agree.
But to what extent socialism is better I am not entirely sure.
Mind you, I have only two Poly-Sci classes to my college education. What do I know?
Some form of socialism is the only solution for Latin America, and most of the region is already formally socialist in one way or another and has been for some time now. Formally socialist or Leftist parties rule most of the continent in Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Chile. I understand that most political parties in the Caribbean are Left parties of some sort usually with “Revolutionary”, “Labor” or “Socialist” in their names. A number of them were allied with Chavez in Venezuela.
Leftwing governments have made massive strides in most of the countries above. The lives of the average Latin American have improved dramatically in every one of those places.
The recent rulers of Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador have made serious leftwing changes in their countries.
Latin Americans hate the Right. Rightwing governments have never done jackshit for the vast majority of Latin Americans.
The main problem with any form of socialism or Left government in Latin America is that the Latin American Right is extremely fascist, violent and anti-democratic. According to them, the Left simply has no right to ever rule any of their countries. Hence any time the Left takes power in any of their countries, the Latin American Right tries to overthrow them by unconstitutional means such as military coups, lockout strikes, deliberate sabotage of the economy, legislative coups, etc.
South America serves as an instructive example.
Hence the implementation of any Left regime is often met with violence, sabotage or coups. There are often widespread street protests even leading to Left and Right street fighters fighting in the streets like Germany in the 1920’s. This sort of thing often occurs in Chile and Venezuela where the Right is strong, radical and violent. The Right has been rioting in the streets for 15 years now in Venezuela ever since Chavez took power. Political protests in Chile usually turn violent as the Left attacks the rallies of the Right and vice versa.
There was a rightwing legislative coup in Paraguay to remove a Left President recently, and there is one ongoing in Brazil. The National Police made an aborted coup attempt to overthrow a Left President in Ecuador. The Right used economic sabotage to ruin the economies of Chile in the 1970’s and Venezuela at the moment. The Left President of Argentina also appears to have been voted out due to economic sabotage by the Right in league with the Obama Administration.
